To Tell the Whole Truth: A Holocaust Testimony from Częstochowa

A powerful and comprehensive memoir on the crimes against- and murder of Częstochowa's longstanding Jewish community.

"I have tried to illustrate as accurately as possible, against the background of pivotal political events, the experiences of three generations of Polish Jews, members of my family and people close to me in my native town of Częstochowa."

Alfred Kromolowski was born in 1908 in Częstochowa, a key industrial city in southern Poland, where he grew up in a family deeply rooted in the region. He earned a law degree from the University of Warsaw in 1935 and, upon returning home, began his career as legal counsel to Jewish industrialists. He also volunteered as secretary of the Anti-Nazi League, aiding Jewish refugees as war and persecution loomed.

Between 1939 and 1945, Alfred witnessed and endured the unimaginable horrors of Nazi occupation: the relentless violence and mass executions, the rise and brutal destruction of the Częstochowa ghetto, and the heartbreaking deportations to Treblinka and other camps. As a prisoner in the forced labor camp HASAG-Pelcery, he survived years of cruelty and despair until his liberation in January 1945. After the war, he was a key witness in Nazi trials and joined Poland's High Commission investigating Nazi crimes. Forced to flee Poland after the 1968 antisemitic campaign, he emigrated with his wife to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he wrote his Holocaust memoir with the precision and clarity of a trained lawyer.

To Tell the Whole Truth is a rare firsthand account of Częstochowa's Jews before and during the Holocaust, as well as a chronicle of three generations of the Kromolowski family. Preserved in its original form in the Yad Vashem Archives, it fills a critical gap in Holocaust historiography--a powerful, unflinching testimony that leaves no stone unturned.